Park City Opera plans to till some new ground with its premiere of Aaron Copland’s “The Tender Land” on July 18 and 19 at Temple Har Shalom. These events will turn into a celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and feature a pre-performance mixer with folk music, complimentary light b ites by Chef Galen Zamarra and a cash bar featuring a specialty cocktail by Alpine Distillery. The somewhat obscure production, set in the West during the early years of the 20th century, is about Laurie, a soon-to-be high school graduate who rebels against the norms of the time to choose her own future. Like any live theater production, these performances, which start at 5 p.m., take a village to prepare and present. The company’s co-founders, Lena Goldstein, Lisl Wangermann and Benjamin Beckman, are working with a cast that includes principal actors soprano Rachel Kobernick, mezzo-soprano Laura Zahn, bass-baritone Erik Danielson, baritone Joseph O’Shea and tenor David Silvano. Rachel Kobernick is Laurie Rachel Kobernick, whose career has taken her to the Kentucky Opera, the Heartbeat Opera and the Cincinnati Opera, will play Laurie on July 18, the night before Goldstein takes on the role July 19. Kobernick said she knew about “The Tender Land” through a high school voice teacher who would assign his young singers the aria known as “Laurie’s Song.” “That was my first experience with this opera,” she said. “I’ve always liked Copland, and I did some exploring deeper into his stuff. This was the only opera he wrote, and that was interesting.” The soprano discovered Park City Opera through previous projects with Artistic Director Beckman and Executive Director Goldstein. “When I found they were doing this show, I auditioned specifically for this role,” Kobernick said. “I wanted to do it because of my history with it and because people don’t perform it often.” Kobernick sees a lot of herself in Laurie. “I loved high school,” she said. “For me it was a great period of my life, and I was very excited to go to college. So the excitement and wonder Laurie has is very real to me.” On the other hand, the role is different because Kobernick is usually cast in young, smart, youthful parts that normally are in comedy and physical comedy. “Another disconnect, I think, is that Laurie’s world in ‘The Tender Land’ is very conservative, and there are a lot of familial constraints and pressures,” she said. “Those are things I want to dig into that are unfamiliar to me.” Kobernick enjoys working with Park City Opera because it has forged a personal bond with Park City and Summit County that is sometimes lost with larger companies. “I had always been a musical kid, and I would always put on performances for my family,” she said. “It was always performing for an audience, being on stage and connecting with people, and Park City Opera has that strong connection with the community.” For information about Kobernick, visit rachelkobernick.com. Laura Zahn plays Ma Moss The national opera community is very small, and Park City Opera is proof. Laura Zahn, who is cast as Ma Moss in “The Tender Land,” hails from the same high school as Kobernick, and the same teacher assigned Zahn to sing “Laurie’s Song.” “This was one of the first arias I ever learned,” she said. “That’s how I was introduced to ‘The Tender Land,’ and I fell in love with the really stunning music throughout the opera.” Zahn, who made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019 and was a finalist in the 2021 John Alexander National Vocal Competition and a semi-finalist in the 2020 NYIOP/Premiere Opera Foundation Competition, came to the Park City Opera this season through auditions. “There are two mezzo roles in the season, with one being Ma Moss, and the other, Marta, that is in ‘Romeo and Juliet,” she said. “They chose me for Ma Moss.” Ma Moss is Laurie’s mother, and she has another daughter, Beth, who is younger than Laurie, Zahn said. “Ma Moss has put a lot of energy into Laurie through high school education,” she said. “So, Laurie’s graduation is such a huge day because it’s the symbol of all that work Ma Moss has done.” Some of that energy comes from the fact that Ma Moss didn’t have the opportunity to graduate high school herself, according to Zahn. “The opera takes place during the Great Depression, and it was less common for women to finish their education,” she said. “And like many parents Ma sees herself in her eldest daughter and wants that daughter to achieve the things she wasn’t able to achieve.” Zahn, who cites Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” as one of her favorite operas, enjoys performing Ma Moss because the character is so human. “She is imbued with all the faults of a parent trying to figure things out for the first time,” she said. “While I’m not a mother myself, I’m still able to see a lot of my own mother in the character.” Zahn’s mother is not in the musical arts, so Zahn culls from her mother’s journey of trying to understand the path her daughter has taken as a musician. “She has struggled with that, and this has been something I’ve been drawing on for this character,” Zahn said. Growing up, Zahn didn’t know opera existed, even though she loved music from an early age. “I started getting involved with theater when I went into middle school and high school, and the The musical theater program was pretty intense and robust in my high school,” she said. “I really loved playing a character, and I loved singing while playing a character, and I found it super exciting when I realized in opera you could sing an entire role.” For information about Laura Zahn, visit laurazahnmezzo.com. Erik Danielson is Grandpa Moss Erik Danielson auditioned for Park City Opera nearly two seasons ago, and he made an impression. “They reached out to me at the beginning of this year, and offered me another interview,” he said. “If an opera company reaches out and says they remember you from a year ago, you say, ‘Yes,’ and make things work because that doesn’t happen often.” Danielson plays Grandpa Moss, Ma Moss’s father and Laurie’s grandfather. “Grandpa is kind of the bad guy, but he’s my favorite kind of bad guy to play,” he said. “He does what he does because he thinks that’s the right thing to do.” Danielson also thinks his character has experienced some trauma dealing with strangers, and projects that onto his family and his farm’s laborers, Martin and Top. “He’s not just a crotchety old man, because his suspicion is earned,” Danielson said. “His mistake comes from trying to protect his family and his granddaughter without explaining the situation. He just thinks he can tell Laurie what to do and she will do it because he knows best.” When Laurie doesn’t do what she’s told, Grandpa Moss flies into a rage. Danielson said. “He does that because he sees what Laurie does as an act of defiance, and I think that reaction comes from the ideals of his time. The fact that she’s arguing at all is not something to be discussed. It’s something to be squashed.” While Grandpa Moss is very different from Danielson, the singer sees the reason why the character reacts the way he does. “He’s so terrified that something is going to happen to Laurie that happened to his daughter, Ma Moss, and he’s determined not to let that happen, which makes him grab hold of the situation and squeeze too much,” he said. “Because he squeezes too much, Laurie slips away through his fingers.” Danielson, who has experience playing villains such as Nick Shadow in Igor Stravnisky’s “Rake’s Progress,” works hard into the Grandpa Moss character. “You have to find what is familiar to you, so I’m challenging the ‘Get-off-my-lawn’ persona, which I think is part of all of us,” he said. “I’m also putting that irritation you get when an unexpected burden falls on you.” Danielson also channels some of his own grandfather. “He liked to come across as a cranky old coot, but he was an absolute teddy bear,” Danielson said. “One of the things he would say to us when we were all being silly was, ‘You twit,’ and would give a twinkle smile, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. And you would see his eye sparkle.” For information about Erik Danielson, visit erikdanielsonbaritone.com. Joseph O’Shea plays Top Joseph O’Shea bases his role of Top from his work of performing operas based in the South. “Even though ‘The Tender Land’ doesn’t (take place in that region), I assume my character is from the South,” he said. “One of his arias comes from a songbook based in the Southern Appalachian area. So, I pull a lot from my experiences growing up in Mobile, Alabama, and put them into this.” O’Shea specifically pulls out attributes from the generation lived during the time “The Tender Land” was set. “I worked a lot with my grandfather,” he said. “He was a construction worker who lived in the middle of nowhere in State Line, Mississippi. So I take some of the inflections of the language and the camaraderie between Martin and Top and the attitude toward work from him.” O’Shea also sees his character, Top, and his friend, Martin, as relatively uneducated. “So I kind of view them through the lens that I see my grandfather, who was, for the majority of his early life, uneducated,” he said. O’Shea came to Park City Opera after talking with a friend who he worked with at the Florida Grand Opera. “During the audition process, I found (Park City Opera’s) Ben Beckman had many close friends who are also my friends,” he said. “In fact, there are some cast members from this season that I’ve worked with before.” O’Shea had known about “The Tender Land” because his wife played Laurie in a production 10 years ago. “I had always seen the score sitting on my shelf, but I never opened it up,” he said. “So, this is the first time I dug deep into the story.” For information about Joseph O’Shea, visit osheabaritone.com. David Silvano is Martin David Silvano, who plays Martin, the love interest of Laurie, knows the character inside and out. “This is the third time I’ve done the production in the role of Martin, so I’ve gotten the chance to explore it from many different angles,” he said. “It’s been interesting to have three opportunities to look at the same story and the same character to see what I want to keep and what I want to change and how I want to interact with my colleagues in the show.” For the Park City Opera production, Silvano decided to keep the audience guessing. “I think there is some of me in there because, at his core, Martin is trying to do the right thing and be the right person, which I try to do in my daily life,” he said. “But this time, I’m trying to lean toward a little more ambiguity in terms of what this character’s intentions are in order to sort of keep the audience compelled.” Silvano, who lives in Salt Lake City, has worked with Park City Opera in some capacity or another since its inception two years ago. “I knew Ben from a production of ‘Carmen’ we did together when he was a rehearsal pianist,” he said. “Through staying in touch, I found he, Lisl and Lena were starting an opera company in Park City. So, I reached out, and I’ve been steadily singing with the company ever since.” Silvano grew up playing piano and picked up the French horn and trumpet along the way. He also played in a metal band, which was something O’Shea also did. “I played bass and rhythm guitar, keyboards and vocals,” Silvano said. “Then I found my way into straight theater.” Silvano discovered musical theater in high school, and then joined the military after graduation. After returning to civilian life, Silvano found he missed theater and arts. “I went back to school and found classical vocal performance and haven’t looked back since,” he said.  For information about David Silvano, visit davidsilvano.com. Park City Opera: ‘The Tender Land’ When: 5 p.m. July 18 and 19  Where: Temple Har Shalom, 3700 N. Brookside Ct. Web: parkcityopera.org/the-tender-land The post It takes a village of singers to present Aaron Copland’s ‘The Tender Land’ appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less